Measuring the impact of research access in the developing world | Elsevier Connect

abernard102@gmail.com 2013-01-09

Summary:

" ... We all know that in many parts of the developing world, there are shortages of food, clean water, adequate housing, health care and other resources necessary for a well-functioning economic and social infrastructure. What is less appreciated is how these countries have historically also lacked access to up-to-date scientific research. Not only does this lack of access limit scientific activity; it deprives policymakers of knowledge that could help them address many of the symptoms of national underdevelopment. For the past decade, Research4Life has been working to close this knowledge gap by providing developing nations with free or very low-cost access to peer-reviewed journals ... Research4Life is a public-private partnership of four UN agencies, Yale and Cornell Universities, the International Association of Scientific, Technical & Medical Publishers (STM) and  nearly 200 academic publishers worldwide, both commercial and nonprofit. Elsevier is a founding member and contributes more than 25 percent of the content.  With the support of technology partner Microsoft, the program is providing access to research publications in more than 100 developing nations. Researchers in participating institutions have access to a similar level of information as their peers in developed countries, enabling them to contribute to the evolving body of global research. The goal is to help attain six of theUnited Nation’s Millennium Development Goals by 2015, reducing the scientific knowledge gap between industrialized countries and the developing world. In November,  the publishers in the partnership renewed their commitment to Research4lifethrough 2020 to ensure that 18,000 peer reviewed resources continue to reach research communities in low- and middle-income countries.  Research4Life comprises four programs: HINARI for health, AGORA for agriculture, OARE for environment and ARDI for innovation. The oldest and largest, HINARI, uses the resources of the World Health Organization (WHO), Yale University Library and over 150 medical publishers to provide developing world institutions access to some of the world’s most important published medical research.It’s clear from key metrics of HINARI’s growth that the service is having a significant impact. The HINARI online library now makes available over 17,000 scientific publications from more than 150 publishers to over 5,000 organizations, including universities, medical schools and teaching hospitals, research institutions and government offices. A survey for a 2010 commissioned review of the user experience of the Research4Life programs revealed that more respondents (24 percent) cite HINARI as a source for life-science and medical research than any other source, and more respondents (32 percent) cite HINARI as the source they use most frequently.

But what about the practical impacts of the availability and use of HINARI?  In a November 2011 post on The Scholarly Kitchen, the blog of the Society for Scholarly Publishing, Phil Davis looked at the complementary merits of case studies and statistical analysis as tools for measuring impact. Research4Life has adopted a similar twin-pronged approach to examining the impact our programs have had on our users, their research, their communities and their countries’ economic development and welfare..."

Link:

http://elsevierconnect.com/measuring-the-impact-of-research-access-in-the-developing-world/

From feeds:

Open Access Tracking Project (OATP) » abernard102@gmail.com

Tags:

oa.new oa.business_models oa.publishers oa.comment oa.elsevier oa.surveys oa.yale.u oa.agriculture oa.case oa.reports oa.pharma oa.environment oa.biomedicine oa.unesco oa.who oa.hinari oa.cornell.u oa.agora oa.oare oa.ardi oa.microsoft oa.stem oa.research4life

Date tagged:

01/09/2013, 10:40

Date published:

01/09/2013, 05:40